And what if we all die tomorrow?

Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of conversation about the internal reports at OpenAI and Anthropic that stated there’s a 10% or so chance the AI will eradicate humanity over the next decade. That has stirred a lot of debates about whether we should slow down the progress of AI, change how we do R&D and regulate it, or stop advancements in this field altogether. None of these are topics that I will cover here, not because they are not important but because I think there’s another topic that’s equally if not more important. Should we care?

In life there are things we can control and things that we cannot. In the words of a good friend of mine and fellow entrepreneur, Kaben Clauson, we as humans are incredibly good at catastrophizing the future. It’s so easy to think about what could go wrong and get paralyzed by such outcomes. That’s why a vast majority of the population is risk averse. Most people don’t choose the path they would want to because they are afraid of the consequences should that go wrong.

I believe that this has created a crisis of authenticity. The share of people I see living a thoroughly authentic life is shrinking as more potential bad outcomes are surfaced by the media. If it’s not AI killing us all, it’s nuclear warfare, a man-made virus, corrupt politics, the broken healthcare system, aliens, the Talibans, China, or who knows.

There’s a million ways we could all die tomorrow. My question is: so what?

What if we all die tomorrow?

Should we stop pursuing our goals, close our companies, and sit at home waiting for the inevitable end? If we are authentically living, it means that the activities we are currently engaged in are the ones we ought to be doing. In theory, and hopefully in practice, we are pursuing our dreams and being happy with where we are on the journey. This doesn’t mean that we have everything we want, but that, in the words of Don Miguel Ruiz, that we have followed the 4th principle and we did our best each and every day.

That makes the agenda for tomorrow simple: continue pursuing our highest potential and become better versions of ourselves. If we have one day left or a thousand, the only bad decision is to not do what we want to do out of fear of a future that hasn’t arrived yet. Nobody knows what will happen and there’s no pressure that one human, or an AI for what is worth, will.

Live life one day at a time, be grateful for another morning on Earth, give your absolute best, acknowledging that best may change from day to day, and spend all your time on projects that you care about. And if we were all to die tomorrow, so be it.